She maybe a movie ‘icon’ and an enduring part of Anglo-American movie history but that doesn’t make Elizabeth Taylor any kind of relic, as is clearly evident when reading the Oscar winning actresses’ Twitter page! After all, how many wheelchair bound 78 year olds, 8 times married, having survived 3 hip replacement operations, a benign heart arrhythmia, two bouts of pneumonia and once requiring a tracheotomy after a case of Asian flu, manage to keep so active in their everyday life?

Screen icon, Taylor, has spoken out about who she’d like to see play her in the upcoming biopic about her life and the Hollywood legend has stated that best person for the role is herself!

On her Twitter page Elizabeth has adamently stated, “Hold your horses, world. I’ve been hearing all kinds of rumours about someone being cast to play me in a film about Richard and myself. No one is going to play Elizabeth Taylor, but Elizabeth Taylor. Not at least until I’m dead, and at the moment I’m having too much fun being alive.’

But its not only Liz’s big screen career that has brought her fame and fortune, not by a long chalk!  Miss Taylor once committed her beauty to the annals of Playboy history in a pictorial in the January 1963 issue of another American icon, Hugh Hefner’s men’s magazine.

Taylor featured in the Playboy magazine pictorial during a period in her life when no one was hotter on the big screen and Playboy capitalized on the violet eyed beauty’s stardom during the same year that she earned $1 million in her role as Cleopatra (in the movie of the same name) opposite her husband, Richard Burton’s Mark Anthony.

The movie made her the top-paid movie star up to that point. She’s known for appearing in the magazine right at the height of her success being just one celebrity among dozens who were signed by Playboy at just the right time.

Beginning an acting career as a child, Joey Heatherton made her first notable appearance on TV on  The Perry Como Show, which saw her playing a love struck teenager falling for Mr C. This also led to several appearances on the crooning, Dean Martin show in the late 1950’s.

As an actress, dancer and singer, Joey became a much loved celebrity back in the 1960’s and from June to September 1968, along with Frank Sinatra, Jr., she co-hosted Martin’s summer substitute musical comedy hour, Dean Martin Presents the Golddiggers. She also made multiple appearances on the many other variety shows proliferating 1960s television, such as The Andy Williams Show, The Hollywood Palace, The Ed Sullivan Show and This is Tom Jones. She first appeared on television on her father’s show The Merry Mailman, a popular children’s show in New York.

In the mid 1960’s Joey embarked on a singing career that saw her releasing 2 singles, Hullaballoo in 1965 and When You Call Me Baby in 1966. Both sold poorly but, since the 1970s, both have become very sought after in the UK among Northern Soul collectors, the second of which can now be found changing hands among dealers and collectors for three-figure sums.

In the later part of her career Joey performed in Las Vegas and acted in a few less known TV shows and films, including 1972s Bluebeard with Richard Burton in the title role, in which she appeared topless, and a starring role as Xaviera Hollander in 1977s post-Watergate scandal-inspired The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington.

In April 1997, Joey’s career took her yet another direction when she appeared nude in April 1997’s  issue of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine.